Learn how to communicate with the most common Italian frequency adverbs such as sempre ("always")
Now Playing: Lesson Audio
Get a breakdown of the dialogue and translations instantly with the Premium line-by-line Audio. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
Unlock Lesson Notes and Transcripts for every single lesson. Sign Up for a Free Lifetime Account and Get 7 Days of Premium Access.
| INTRODUCTION |
| Cinzia: Buon giorno a tutti! Mi chiamo Cinzia. |
| Marco: Marco here. Newbie Series, season 1, lesson 21 - How Much is Too Much? Buon giorno a tutti! Hi! My name is Marco and I'm joined here by Cinzia! Come stai Cinzia! |
| Cinzia: Bene, grazie, ma oggi fa caldissimo, Marco. |
| Marco: But today it's very hot isn't it? |
| Cinzia: Yes! It's really hot! |
| Marco: Caldissimo means very hot, right? |
| Cinzia: Yes. |
| Marco: In this lesson we will take a look at some of the most common frequency adverbs. |
| Cinzia: This conversation takes place at a train station. |
| Marco: And it is between John and Laura. |
| Cinzia: They are friends, therefore they will be speaking informal Italian. |
| DIALOGUE |
| John: Laura, che fai nel tempo libero? |
| Laura: Leggo spesso i romanzi di fantascienza. E tu? |
| John: Leggo a volte i romanzi d’amore e ascolto musica pop italiana. |
| Laura: Interessante, io preferisco il rock classico, conosci i Pink Floyd? |
| John: Li adoro! |
| Marco: Let’s hear it slowly now. |
| John: Laura, che fai nel tempo libero? |
| Laura: Leggo spesso i romanzi di fantascienza. E tu? |
| John: Leggo a volte i romanzi d’amore e ascolto musica pop italiana. |
| Laura: Interessante, io preferisco il rock classico, conosci i Pink Floyd? |
| John: Li adoro! |
| Marco: And now, with the translation. |
| John: Laura, che fai nel tempo libero? |
| John: Laura, what do you do in your free time? |
| Laura: Leggo spesso i romanzi di fantascienza. E tu? |
| Laura: I often read science fiction novels. And you? |
| John: Leggo a volte i romanzi d’amore e ascolto musica pop italiana. |
| John: I sometimes read romantic novels and listen to Italian pop music. |
| Laura: Interessante, io preferisco il rock classico, conosci i Pink Floyd? |
| Laura: Interesting. I prefer classic rock. Do you know Pink Floyd? |
| John: Li adoro! |
| John: I love them! |
| POST CONVERSATION BANTER |
| Cinzia: So Marco, I have a great romantic novel to lend you! |
| Marco: To lend me? Or to lend John? |
| Cinzia: To lend you! Don't you read romantic novels? |
| Marco: No, no John does! John's is a strange fellow, well he's just a normal fellow I guess! |
| Cinzia: Ahahah! |
| Marco: So Cinzia, what about you? Do you read romanzi di fantascienza? |
| Cinzia: Yes, of course, I like romanzi di fantascienza, science fiction romance... science fiction novels. |
| Marco: What is this science fiction romance you've been reading? |
| Cinzia: What do you mean? |
| Marco: No you just said it. |
| Cinzia: Ah well, I was just thinking about a kind of romance somewhere in another age, I don't know, I just got confused, sorry, Marco! |
| Marco: Ok, she is daydreaming again! Sorry, people. |
| VOCAB LIST |
| Marco: Let us take a look at today’s vocabulary. First... |
| Cinzia: fare [natural native speed] |
| to do, to make, to build |
| Cinzia: fare [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Cinzia: fare [natural native speed] |
| Marco: Next word |
| Marco: tempo libero [natural native speed] |
| Marco: free time, spare time |
| Marco: tempo libero [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Marco: tempo libero [natural native speed] |
| Marco: Next word |
| Cinzia: leggere [natural native speed] |
| Marco: to read |
| Cinzia: leggere [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Cinzia: leggere [natural native speed] |
| Marco: Next word |
| Marco: romanzo [natural native speed] |
| Marco: novel |
| Marco: romanzo [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Marco: romanzo [natural native speed] |
| Marco: Next word |
| Cinzia: a volte [natural native speed] |
| Marco: sometimes |
| Cinzia: a volte [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Cinzia: a volte [natural native speed] |
| Marco: Next word |
| Marco: fantascienza [natural native speed] |
| Marco: science fiction |
| Marco: fantascienza [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Marco: fantascienza [natural native speed] |
| Marco: Next word |
| Cinzia: ascoltare [natural native speed] |
| Marco: to listen |
| Cinzia: ascoltare [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Cinzia: ascoltare [natural native speed] |
| Marco: Next word |
| Marco: preferire [natural native speed] |
| Marco: to prefer |
| Marco: preferire [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Marco: preferire [natural native speed] |
| Marco: And last word |
| Cinzia: adorare [natural native speed] |
| Marco: to worship, to love, to like |
| Cinzia: adorare [slowly - broken down by syllable] |
| Cinzia: adorare [natural native speed] |
| VOCAB AND PHRASE USAGE |
| Cinzia: Let’s have a look at the usage for some of the words and expressions. The first expression we will look at is tempo libero. |
| Marco: Cinzia, can you give us an example please? |
| Cinzia: Non ho tempo libero. |
| Marco: I don’t have any free time. |
| Cinzia: leggere |
| Marco: And the sample sentence is? |
| Cinzia: Leggo il giornale. |
| Marco: I read the newspaper. |
| Cinzia: romanzi |
| Marco: And the sample sentence is? |
| Cinzia: Leggi i romanzi? |
| Marco: Do you read novels? |
| Cinzia: a volte |
| Marco: And the sample sentence is? |
| Cinzia: A volte non ti capisco Marco. |
| Marco: Sometimes I don't understand you Marco. |
| Cinzia: Can I make a change? I want to change a volte in spesso? |
| Marco: Now, this is not a TV game where you can buy something or change vocals or something, so let's go on. |
| Cinzia: Ok, sorry, I was just telling the truth! |
| Marco: This is not la Ruota della Fortuna, with Mike Bongiorno! |
| Cinzia: Ahahaha! |
| Marco: Is still Mike Bongiorno on? |
| Cinzia: Yes, of course, Mike Bongiorno is Highlander! |
| Marco: Yes, and it's actually creepy, and before we forget, la Ruota della Fortuna is? |
| Cinzia: The wheel of fortune! Marco as always of course, you are so old style! |
| Marco: No, no... |
| Cinzia: That's why you like La Ruota della Fortuna! |
| Marco: I can just say no. |
| Cinzia: You like Ok, il prezzo è giusto with Iva Zanicchi? |
| Marco: You know I'm actually good, I'm actually good at that! |
| Cinzia: Really? |
| Marco: Yep. Before we forget O, il prezzo è giusto is The price is right. |
| Cinzia: And wait Marco, we shall see the last verb, adorare... You know how to use this verb! Come on, tell me you adore me. |
| Marco: No, adoro la cucina italiana! Oh actually it was your line! |
| Cinzia: Fine, but come on, say the truth! Ok, let's go to the grammar point! |
| Marco: We still have to translate Adoro la cucina italiana. |
| Cinzia: I love Italian cuisine! |
| Marco: Ok, this wraps it up for the vocabulary usage. On we go! |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Marco: In today’s lesson we will take a look at frequency adverbs. Frequency adverbs, what are those? |
| Cinzia: Marco! Don’t you know frequency adverbs? |
| Marco: I frequently forget frequency adverbs. |
| Cinzia: They are avverbi di frequenza. Come on, Marco! |
| Marco: Ok, that in Italian means frequency adverbs, so avverbi di frequenza. Cinzia, please tell me and everybody else, what is the function of frequency adverbs? |
| Cinzia: Yes, of course. So frequency adverbs are used to provide additional information regarding how often the subject performs a certain action. |
| Marco: Ok... |
| Cinzia: And this frequency is conveyed in relative terms, so this means it does not relate to an absolute time measure. |
| Marco: Oh, like, for example, “twice a week”? |
| Cinzia: Yes,twice a week, once a month. |
| Marco: Once a year, or whatever. |
| Cinzia: Yes, so they just specify a relative time measure. |
| Marco: Ok, a few examples then. |
| Cinzia: For example, we have sempre |
| Marco: “always” |
| Cinzia: and spesso |
| Marco: “often” |
| Cinzia: raramente |
| Marco: “rarely, seldom”, we did see spesso, “often”, in the dialog didn't we? |
| Cinzia: Yes of course! |
| Marco: So let's hear that phrase again! |
| Cinzia: So it was Laura saying to John, leggo spesso i romanzi di fantascienza. |
| Marco: And in English it means “I often read science fiction novels.” So we don’t know if she reads science fiction novels everyday, but we do know she often reads them. |
| Cinzia: So, many times. |
| Marco: Relatively many times. |
| Cinzia: As you can see in this phrase we have the adverb “often”, spesso, positioned after the verb. Actually this is a general rule, because frequency adverbs normally are positioned after the verb, in simple tenses. |
| Marco: OK So for example, io mangio spesso la pizza, “I often eat pizza.” We have io mangio, and then |
| Cinzia: ... spesso |
| Marco: Verb, and then... |
| Cinzia: frequency adverb... instead, in the compound tenses the frequency adverbs are normally positioned after the main verb past participle. |
| Marco: Yes, so here’s a short example for passato prossimo tense, which we should cover in later lessons, and it is, io ho parlato spesso a John, "I have often talked to John." Please note that spesso is after io ho parlato, the main verb past participle. |
| Cinzia: Please remember that the syntax of frequency adverbs may be changed in order to obtain diverse and more refined stylistic effects. Then what else did we see in the dialog? |
| Marco: Well, we did see the verb fare. What does it mean? |
| Cinzia: “To do”, “to make”, |
| Marco: Yes, and it is one of the most frequently used Italian verbs. I actually remember one of my high school Italian grammar teachers, that she printed a page from a dictionary with fare with its synonyms and told us, whenever you can, actually always, she actually said sempre, to use synonyms of fare unless you are forced to by the situation, because using fare in every single sentence actually make the conversation dull. |
| Cinzia: Yes this is true, Marco, this is actually true. But we have to say there are some cases that fare is appropriate. |
| Marco: Yes, for example, “please, make me an offer”. |
| Cinzia: Per favore fammi un'offerta. |
| Cinzia: Then, similarly to its English equivalent the verb preferire, “to prefer”, may be followed by either a direct object or a verb. |
| Marco: Yes. And finally, the last verb we saw today, was adorare, right? |
| Cinzia: Yes. |
| Marco: And it means? |
| Cinzia: To worship. |
| Marco: yes, to worship. And it really means “to love something intensely”, to really be a fan of something. For example in the dialogue, Laura said adoro i Pink Floyd, right? |
Outro |
| Cinzia: Yes. And that’s it for today’s lesson. |
| Marco: Don't forget to check out the lesson transcript and the PDF on ItalianPod101.com. |
| Cinzia: And always feel free to use our forum for your questions. |
| Marco: And if you like to leave a comment we’ll be happy to answer back. |
| Cinzia: Vieni a trovarci! Drop by! |
| Marco: Ciao! |
| Cinzia: Ciao ciao! |
Comments
Hide